Supply Chain Manangement

Supply Chain

Since CarID is a dropoff business, our supply chain is a bit different, but each vendor/manufacture has roughly the same supply chain. Each manufacture gets their products from their source, whether its plastic to steal and from glass to diamonds. From their it goes to the sorting facility where they break down the raw materials and distribute to all the manufactures where they start the manufacture process of the products. Each facility gets the raw materials, and start the build process of all the items. Once the items are complete, they are shipped to the vendor. Some items do not ship to vendors, and the manufacture is the vendor. From the vendor it gets packaged and shipped to the customer.

Delivery

Since Alot of the items are manufactured in bulk, the delivery time from the sorting facility to the manufacturing facility is not so important. Everything is made in bulk and the vendors have enough stock in each warehouse to meet the demand. Sometimes we run into backorders, but it is very rare.

Quality

The Quality of each item is hand picked. We only use certain grades of steel, aluminum, plastic, rubber, etc. Depending on the items depends on the certain grade of raw material is used to make that product to meet the standards of the customers.

Time

The time that the items take for the manufacturing time can be anywhere from 10 days all the way to 5 months. Some of our items take less time then others to get manufactured. Floor mats can take about 10 days to make. Certain steel and plastic items can take anywhere up to 5 months from the time the raw materials are sourced to the time it is in the vendor's hands.

Cost

The cost of each product is determined by the detail and the production time of the item. Everytime the product flows, the price increases a bit so each company can make their money. By the time it reaches us, we sell it at jobber cost, which means the cost that the customer pays for the item. This cost is usually double the cost of what we pay minus 20 percent.

Recomendations

I recommend CarID being more aware of the flow from raw materials to when it comes into our hands. Alot of the times, our vendors tell us one thing which is not necessarily true. Most of the times we do not know where the merchandise is and this can be a problem because if we have to wait, then our customers have to wait, and this can be a problem.